With the new year comes a renewed sense of hopefulness. Although nothing was really different when we woke up the morning of January 1st, something felt different, nonetheless.

The trying year of 2020 has finally come to a close and now we give ourselves permission to dream for a little: dream about new goals and aspirations; resolutions we’re going to make; mountains we’re going to climb. Anything is possible on January 1st.

Maybe it’s romanticism, or maybe it’s escapism, but I’d venture to say that January 1, 2021, was extra powerful. The last 365 days tested our strength as a collective on every level. We experienced so much loss on a global scale it’s challenging to even attempt to process it. Our workplaces changed—potentially forever—and our resilience was put to the test. The way we carry out every aspect of our day-to-day lives looks nothing like it did on January 1st, 2020.

But now we get to start fresh again: a clean slate.

Nothing magically changed when the clock struck midnight on New Years Day, yet everything changed. We’re still in the same pandemic. We’re still trying to navigate work and life the same way we were last year. Life is still just as “uncertain” and “unprecedented” as it was on December 31st, but right now, we can choose hope.

We come in to 2021 with the knowledge of our strength; hard evidence of our resilience: we survived 2020. This time in isolation had silver linings we may be too consumed in grief to see at first: things like creativity like we’ve never seen before, humans connecting in ways they haven’t in a long time and realizing we have so much to be grateful for.

Marketing has talked about humanizing customers for years, but now we got to see that in action. Brands of all sizes and status were put to the ultimate test last year, and many came out stronger than ever before. We learned a lot of lessons the hard way last year, but companies—and marketing as a whole—are better for it. 

As we’re all acutely aware of, a lot can change in 365 days. And let’s be honest, we can only go up from here.